Garcetti called for the city to more than double the amount of money it spends on repairs to D- and F-ranked streets, where pavement is so damaged that it frequently needs to be rebuilt — typically at a cost of $1 million or more per lane mile.
Yet a major portion of that work cannot happen unless the City Council increases the fee charged to utilities that rip up and repair the city’s streets. And in recent weeks, business leaders have been pushing back on the idea.
Garcetti’s spending plan calls for the city to collect $70.7 million in Street Damage Restoration Fees in 2018-19, up from the $8.3 million budgeted for the current year. About $30 million of that new revenue would be spent to repair L.A.’s worst roads, with additional money going to maintain streets that are still in decent condition.
. . .The Central City Assn., a group that focuses heavily on real estate development, warned city lawmakers that the fee increase would have a disproportionate effect on housing construction downtown, where streets are being torn up to provide utility hookups for new residential buildings.
“We do not want to see the Street Damage Restoration Fee become a means by which downtown … becomes the primary funding source for road reconstruction throughout Los Angeles,” Jessica Lall, the group’s president and chief executive, wrote in a letter in May.
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